Long-scalping equity options against time decay and market drift

[fullautotrading]

Today the mkt rised a bit, just enough to let us break a new high-water mark. In fact, we touched for the first time 139.4K, while the current PNL is 134K (157.4 days elapsed, $852 daily avg). 44% current funds usage. 12.7K commissions.

ES FUT 20220916 GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [ESU2, 495512566, mult: 50]

Now if you remember a few posts ago we kept under watch the 2 layers with larges losses. Let's take a look at them now:

ES FOP 20220819 2850 P GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW3Q2 P2850, 509909241, mult: 50]

ES FOP 20221021 2900 P GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW3V2 P2900, 510341141, mult: 50]

Finally, with some patience, we have turned them into positive layers (12K and 7K respectively, so far), just as expected.

In addition, now we have also enforced a spread for protection.

 

[fullautotrading]

We ended week 23 of trading in our "public illustration" at 138.1K profit and 12.9K commissions. Current fund usage 49.5%:

A few layers still need to become positive.

So far we have been trading S&P options, mechanically scalping in full automation against the decay and gradually recovering the stop-loss orders (no prediction whatsoever involved), by continuous "information transfer", from one layer to another. Lately, we have defined also a ("rolling") protective spread to deal with possible "black swan" events.

We have seen that ES options are suitable for this task, even though option automation is not trivial at all and requires taking care of tons of details, in a rather neverending effort.

It is, however, worth the effort because, we can note the difference with respect to scalping the corresponding futures (as seen in previous "illustrations"). In this case, the DD are much short-lived because the decay is constantly acting in our favour. It is also advisable to work with the best tradeoff between low delta and low vega. This, in practice, may mean in many cases to work by maintaining a rolling folio of instruments in the options matrix with suitable price and maturity in the range of 60-70dd, obviously depending on current volatility.

The market we have been trading was not the "easiest" one, as we also got war and the S&P declined the whole period. Nevertheless, we have managed to extract a profit, mostly because the decay helps a lot and also because we have been partially riding the unfavourable moves by long scalps, which have brought down the avg selling price.

This is the ES chart during the whole period (1 rollover is included) of this trading session:

ES FUT 20220617 GLOBEX 50 → ES FUT 20220916 GLOBEX 50

 

[fullautotrading]

Another week has gone. Let's see the situation.

ES closed a bit lower than last week:

ES FUT 20220617 GLOBEX 50 → ES FUT 20220916 GLOBEX 50

Our PNL is a bit higher due to the extra decay we have been grabbing.
Currently 142.3K, with 13.2K in commissions, 165 days elapsed. Funds currently in use: 48.8%.

Our "black swan insurance" (the bear spread we defined previously)

ES FOP 20221216 2250 P GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [ESZ2 P2250, 567386034, mult: 50] (short 10)
ES FOP 20221216 2750 P GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [ESZ2 P2750, 534471394, mult: 50] (long 10)

is currently costing us about: 1596.60 (short) - 3278.40 (long).

 

[fullautotrading]

Today we reached a new PNL high, while the mkt raised a bit (3945):

our PNL touched 148K, while currently, it's 146.5K. 169 days elapsed so far since we started. 13.6K gone in commissions. Current Fund usage: 50.8%.

Current folio situation:

 

[fullautotrading]

This week I have been doing fewer updates to the public illustration, as I have been quite busy trading. Anyway, not much is happening. ES closing at 3963, just a bit higher than Tuesday picture (3945):

ES FUT 20220617 GLOBEX 50 → ES FUT 20220916 GLOBEX 50

I have active 50 "layers" at the moment loaded on the platform. In practice all instances of ES options, apart from those few SPX, VIX, NQ we tried out at the beginning, we abandoned to move to ES. Clearly many represent multiple instruments because of "information transfers" (rollovers).

Le's take a look at a few ones, just to see some action:

ES FOP 20220624 2800 P GLOBEX 50 → ES FOP 20220819 2750 P GLOBEX 50

ES FOP 20220930 2850 P GLOBEX 50

The global situation (all instruments) currently is as follows:

173 days elapsed. Total PNL $152,7K, commissions $14.3K. Daily avg $886.7. Current fund usage: 64.7%.

I am sorry I cannot convey in a more complete manner how the platform carries out its daily work, beyond my explanations and static pictures.

Anyway, keep in mind that these public illustrations are obviously made for the specific purpose to show possible interested traders/investors possible uses of my platform and anyone (with suitable capital, obviously) can ask me for a copy of it and run it live on his own machine and (portfolio margin) account and also discuss the trading activity and the results here on Elite Trader (if they wish so).

Recapping the main ideas, what we are doing in this thread is riding unilaterally the option decay and protecting with long scalps against corrections. We are also recovering the stop loss orders through the so-called "information transfer", which allows us to close at a later time the orders used to hedge ("stop-loss" orders). In addition, it is possible to add "protective structures" as we have seen with an example of the "rolling bear spread", in case we fear the (highly improbable) "black swan" and wish to sleep better. In practice, by giving up a small portion of profits, we can have a powerful device capable of the "black swan" into an occasion of good profit, while the bot does its "ordinary" work of scalping-hedging and (loss recovery).

It is also possible to adjust this approach to trade commodities (with larger funds, and possibly using both PUTs and CALLs, unless a "unilateral" exposure is desired for other hedging purposes).

 

[fullautotrading]

Another week has gone and this time we end up with some extra profits, as ES reached 4132:

Our profit has a new record at 181.6K (179.8 days elapsed so far). Commissions 15K.
Avg daily profit is around 1K:

All layers (50 currently active, including all rollovers) are now in profit.
Funds currently used 57.4%.

Just a couple of layer screenshots, to see some trading activity:

ES FOP 20221021 2900 P GLOBEX 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW3V2 P2900, 510341141, mult: 50]

ES FOP 20220715 2400 P GLOBEX 50 → ES FOP 20221021 2750 P GLOBEX 50

 

[fullautotrading]

End of the week. ES rose just a little bit. We left it at 4132 last Saturday and the situation today is (4142):

The current PNL situation (185,2K, with 15.7K commissions, 187 days elapsed so far, current fund usage of 37.9%):

So far we have been working mostly scalping and rolling options less than 90 dte.

I have also dismantled the "black swan" protection I made as an illustration previously. I will recreate another one later, with some additional variation.

 

[Overnight]

...


So far we have been working mostly scalping and rolling options less than 90 dte.

I have also dismantled the "black swan" protection I made as an illustration previously. I will recreate another one later, with some additional variation.

Use caution on the Wed CPI print next week.

 

[earth_imperator]

Hi @fullautotrading, this strategy indeed looks promising.
I'm new here, I couldn't read all the postings yet.
Is there a posting with a chart that shows the development of the account? An equity curve or so. Or just the monthly raw data.
Ie. useful also for seeing the DDs etc.

Is this for options on futures?
Can it work also with options on (US) stocks/indexes/ETFs etc?

Thx

 

[fullautotrading]

Use caution on the Wed CPI print next week.

Hmm, Overnight can you elaborate a bit on what you are suggesting?